Artificial Intelligence

In a world where we’re continually evolving and making everything faster and more efficient, it’s easy to see why corporations might be tempted to move towards automated recruiting. But while it’s quick and often feels efficient; is it effective?

Can AI Select the Best People?

Choosing the right person for the job can save time and money in the long run. So the question becomes; is AI (artificial intelligence) capable of selecting the bestperson for the job?

Artificial Intelligence in Industry

Artificial intelligence has impacted recruiting most heavily in the candidate search, evaluation, and selection steps. Companies frequently use recruiting tools that leverage websites like Monster and Indeed. Which is why it’s often automation and not careful consideration that determines where a job listing will be posted. Subsequently, there’s an onslaught of resumes sent in – some of which are not from qualified people.

This raises the first issue and one of the reasons companies began leaning on AI in the first place – not enough manpower and too many resumes to sort through individually.

To make matters worse, some recruiting websites have partnerships with other platforms and will bulk post job listings across the internet and sometimes to questionable sites. This further increases the volume of responses and dilutes the quality of applications companies receive. Rather than scale back and create a more targeted search parameter, many companies will use AI either directly within their organization or, more commonly, indirectly (and sometimes unknowingly) by allowing the recruiting websites to evaluate and sort resumes based on their own internal algorithms.

AI recruiting is quantity, not quality, focused. Which only fuels the desire for more artificial intelligence to sort through the high volume of responses received.

Keyword matching is one of the most popular mechanisms used to sort applications, and it boils down to a computer finding enough overlap between a job posting and the candidate’s response. It doesn’t take into account syntax, context or synonyms and allows borderline intelligible applications to get through while those with synonyms in place of keywords may not.

How does AI evaluate personality, drive, and intelligence? Simple. It doesn’t.

A smart candidate may figure out how to “game” the system and get their resume in front of the right person (which is to say, an actual person). But there are plenty of smart and qualified job seekers who are exactly the type of person you’re looking for but who don’t make it a point to outsmart the recruiting algorithms. Chances are, their applications won’t make it to the top of the stack because they don’t use enough of the right “keywords”. How frustrating.

To put it into real-world context; imagine two helpdesk technicians at an investment firm in NYC. Each of them could show up very differently in a search not only because of what they emphasize about the position and their experience but also for something as simple as whether they list themselves in the IT industry or banking industry.

Searches require iteration, adjustment, and creativity to squeeze out results – three fundamental aspects of targeted recruiting that AI struggles to overcome.

Being able to look beyond the resumes and experience of multiple qualified candidates and figure out the personality traits and the best match is a uniquely human quality. In the end, people hire people, and people they like get hired the most.

Ready to work with an experienced IT recruiter that can help you look beyond keywords and find the perfect candidate for your open positions? Contact our team to learn more about how we can help you round out your team.